new york Archives

September 24, 2009November 26, 2023

Blame IT on the UN in NYC this week

This week is UN week in NYC, that annual fall event that results in traffic jams that make normal traffic seem like a breeze.

What with the security lockdowns, sudden road closures, re-routes, news crews, security details and the like, it’s a wonder anything gets done. I was in NYC for about 26 hours this week at the Storage Decisions event where I presented on optimizing for performance and capacity to enable efficient and green storage as well as recording a video on cloud storage and saw or experienced first hand the delays.

This is not going to be one of those complain about how I was inconvenienced rants, rather a bit of fun

Consequently, should you have or had any issues this past week, do like others and blame the UN. For example, late for a meeting, presentation, conference call, coffee break or lunch, getting home or to the ballpark, blame it on the UN. Other potential items that you can feel free to blame on the UN in NYC this week include:

RAID rebuilds on those large disk drives taking to long
Server, workstation, desktop, laptop or iphone reboots taking to long.
Database consistency checks or virus scans taking to long, you know who you can blame!
Cannot get a cell phone, landline or wireless connection inside, outside or anywhere?
Vmotion taking to long to migrate a server, failover not as fast, you know the drill.
IT budget scrapped, yet you have to do more, guess who’s to blame this week
Regulatory compliance, BC/DR, data security have you locked up, yup, thats right!
Cant download, upload or access WebEx, FedEx or backup to cloud, yup, blame it on the UN
Cant get a loan or venture capital financing for your startup, it’s the UNs fault right?
Your kindle brook and Amazon took away the books you bought and downloaded?
Missed your flight, train, car pool ride in another city, you know the story.
Interoperability and vendor finger pointing got you in a bind, yup; it’s the UN in NYC that’s the issue.
Forest fires or dust storms in Australia, ice cap melting at the north pole, yup, the UN in NYC this week

Look, I was stuck in traffic, made the best of it, listened to Infosmack #20 while doing some emails, doing a few calls instead of getting all twisted up about it. I actually like visiting NYC, lots to see and do, however also nice to move on, for those who have never experience NYC during UN week, give it a try sometime.

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – StorageIOblog, twitter @storageio Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Technorati tags: NYC, UN

January 25, 2009March 7, 2022

It feels like Grand Central Station here…

Things have been busy (which is very good) and I feel like I’m at Grand Central station (Terminal) with the new year off to a flurry of activity ranging from my regular consulting, research and client advisory engagement projects, recent speaking appearances (San Jose and Tucson ), doing interviews with the media as well as vendor briefings.

Grand Central Station New York City - December 2008

Photo of Grand Central Station (aka Grand Central Terminal) New York City taken on my cell phone December 2008 after a great dinner at Michael Jordons (Thanks Richard and Dan)

Yup, its a busy time of the year with writing of articles, column and industry trends and perspective pieces as well as supporting the formal launch and release of my new book, "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach) not to mention trying to stay warm during the recent midwest cold weather snaps as well as snow entertainment activities such as snow plowing and sledding.

Greg snow sleeding in the back yard
Greg taking a break and snow sledding in the backyard.

Speaking of appearances, keynote and other events, topics being covered vary from server to storage, data center to disaster recovery, virtualization to data protection among others as well as other themes and topics related to "The Green and Virtual Data Center".

Some upcoming speaking and keynote engagements in various cities covering various topics include (in alphabetic order) Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Cancun, Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Denver Las Vegas, Los Angles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Orange County, Parsippany, Providence, St Louis, and Tampa with more locations and venues to be announced for summer and fall of 2009, keep an eye on the events page for more information.

(Wow, I feel like I’m on the Curtis Preston, aka Mr. Backup starter mini-tour program ;) ).

Ok, now its time to get back to doing some other things, enjoy your winter and spring while you can, time flies fast.

Cheers
gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

December 19, 2008November 22, 2022

Getting Caught Up and Holiday Shopping

Its a busy time of the year as things wind down and wrap up, including holiday shopping and applicable gift wrapping unless you outsource the wrapping to the likes of Amazon.com when shopping on-line in a cloud enabled world.

For me this was a busy week with a quick trip out to New York City (NYC) for some meetings and to do another dinner keynote event, in addition to wrapping up some other projects as well as getting a jump on some up-coming projects and adding some additional events to the 2009 calendar (more on those soon).

Speaking of holiday shopping, Beth Pariseau over at SearchStorage has put out her annual what to get a geek for the holidays piece with this edition titled "Jingle bell storage: What to buy a geek for the holidays".

In addition to Beth’s great list, here are some additional considerations.

For those who might forget their heads if not attached to their shoulders, or late for their own wake, how about a wrist watch with USB flash drive built in (encrypted preferred)

Speaking of encryption, to support increased data growth, replace that too small 8GB encrypted USB flash with a new 16GB encrypted version (My 8GB version I bought a while ago works great).

Oh, and upgrade the DVR (add more and bigger disk drives) to support more editions of “Friday Night Lights“, “How its Made”, “Worlds Toughest Fixes”, “Sunday Night Football”, "Factory Floor" and anything on “HDnet” or “HDnet Movies”, a larger capacity external SAS or SATA attached disk with software to copy what I already have saved.

For those who enjoy Wine and I/O, check out the Vinturi Essential Wine Aerator (Bought one of these after seeing them in Sonoma on a recent trip)

For those who like removable storage media and want to compliment their EMC Retrospect (I have been a Retrospect since well before EMC bought them, I guess that makes me an EMC customer?) or other backups, the Imation Odyssey portable USB adapter (I bought an Odyssey over a year ago) is great for larger backups (beyond a flash drive) when traveling.

In order to track those lost tapes to avoid getting on next years Santa naughty or nice list, how about FujiFind (FujiFilm) Tape tracker

On the software and tools front, Xobni (a form of eDiscovery and search for Microsoft Outlook) along with OutTwit (twitter interface where you can also find myself) if you are using Microsoft Outlook (have been using both of these, great productivity tools).

Still not sure, how about my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach) or my other book "Resilient Storage Networks" (Elseiver) both available at Amazon.com and other fine venues around the world (I bought a copy of both to see how on-line sale worked ;).

That’s it for now as I need to get a few more things done including more holiday shopping and chores not to mention get ready for the snowstorm that is forecasted to dump several inches of new snow tomorrow here in the Stillwater area.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

November 29, 2008November 26, 2023

Downloads for fall 2008 San Francisco Storage Decisions now available

The TechTarget Storage Media Group has posted on Bitpipe the session presentations from the recent fall (November 17-19th) 2008 San Francisco Storage Decisions event. If you have never been to a Storage Decisions event, it?s a great venue for meeting with IT and storage professionals as well as vendors who also show up to show their wares and meet with the attendees. Make no mistake about it, Storage Decisions is not a vendor to vendor meet and industry network event like SNW or a vendor sponsored user group like VMworld or EMCworld, rather, its focused on the IT and storage professional and encourages speakers to be frank and candid in their discussions of technologies, techniques and even of vendors and their solutions.

In addition to doing a keynote session Wednesday evening November 19th on ?Hot Storage Topics for Channel Professionals? at the Storage Strategies for Channel Professionals Dinner event, I also did two presentations at Storage Decisions one in the management and executive track Management and Executive Track on Green and Efficient Storage , an (updated version from what was covered in September 2008 at New York) timely theme given my new book ?The Green and Virtual Data Center? (Auerbach) along with another session in the Storage and capacity management track of ?Clustered and Grid Storage — From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0? (also updated from September 2008)

View the entire list of all Storage Decisions sessions here.

A big thanks to all who came out last week in San Francisco at Storage Decisions and who attended the sessions enabling great discussion and insight both during the sessions, as well as during lunches, breaks and exhibition hours.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

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